68 TheEconomistAugust 3rd 2019
1S
ince it wasbuilt in 1924, the Landhaus
Ilse, or Ilse country house, has been an
incongruous presence on the edge of Bur-
bach, a provincial town in wooded hills
halfway between Frankfurt and Cologne.
Not only does the yellow single-storey box,
with its illuminated central shaft, stand in
contrast to the region’s traditional timber-
framed and slate-clad homes. The house it-
self seems paradoxical. Its confident, mod-
ernist lines are complemented by a less
austere chorus of sloping roof, small lattice
windows, curvaceous chimney-tops and a
weather vane.
Inside, the house—which has not been
renovated since the 1920s—is a riot of col-
our. One room is pink, another blue; a third
is criss-crossed by gold lines. The central
family room gives, on one side, onto the
parlour (painted red), which leads to a con-
servatory. In the cellar, a big kitchen in-
cludes a dumbwaiter that once sent meals
up to the green dining room. Improbable as
it seems, this contradictory place, which
fell into disuse and might have been de-
molished, sheds light on the evolution andnuances of the Bauhaus school of architec-
ture and design, which was founded a cen-
tury ago, in 1919.
For most enthusiasts, the school’s lega-
cy is embodied in iconic designs such as
Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building in Des-
sau (pictured), Marcel Breuer’s tubular
chairs or Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s glass-
domed table lamp. Although it closed in
1933, the Bauhaus posthumously became
the high church of novelty, simplicity and
functionalism, a reformation of an archi-
tectural past of stale ornament and tradi-
tion. White-cubed houses across the world
are today liable to be tagged with the label
“Bauhaus-style”, as if that designation
could mean only one thing.
Three major exhibitions are being heldin Germany to mark the centenary, one in
each of the school’s successive home
towns: Weimar, where it was established
by Gropius; Dessau, which it moved to in
1925; and Berlin, where it was run by Mies
van der Rohe in 1932-33 before closing un-
der pressure from the Nazis. The last, put
on by the Bauhaus Archive, a museum, will
open in September, as will the one in Des-
sau (Weimar’s is already up and running).
The Ilse house will feature prominently in
Berlin. It is likely to disconcert devotees of
clean lines—and simple histories.
Willi Grobleben, the father of the wom-
an who gave the house its name, moved to
Burbach in 1924, says Katrin Mehlich, who
runs the town’s cultural office. The new
technical director of a local quarry, Groble-
ben had the house built as a company
guesthouse; he was given the property as a
pay-off in 1927. His daughter, Ilse, lived
there until she died in 2000. The house was
bought and saved from oblivion by Erika
Wirtz, a local entrepreneur. Not long after-
wards she came across a familiar-looking
floor-plan in a book about the Bauhaus.
“That is my Ilse,” Wirtz exclaimed.
Actually, the plan was for the white-
cubed, flat-roofed Haus am Horn in Wei-
mar—the Bauhaus’s earliest foray into ar-
chitecture, which had been the main ex-
hibit in the school’s first big show, in 1923.
All the rooms in the Haus am Horn were—
like those of the Ilse house—organised
around a central, sky-lit family room. The
layout was socially progressive (there wasArchitecture and designThinking outside the box
BURBACH
On the centenary of the Bauhaus, the kinks in the school’s clean lines are visibleBooks & arts
69 Thedisinformationage
70 A historyofmosquitoes
70 Sporting fictionAlso in this section